The bull is not the only animal.
Buried deep, dust rotted horns decay.
Remembering the steps of the labyrinth’s dance.

In the house of double axes: the reborn snake.
Glazed faience skin of quarzty sheen winds
over pithoi jars and aqueducts run dry.
Where red-skinned men and white skinned women,
danced. Feet stained with dusted saffron.
Upon greenstone, jadeite, obsidian,
Beat.

Snake is the dance remembered by the dead bull.
Wound around the white arms of broken collonades.
In the palace of tunnels.
In the city of chthonic promise.
Coiled and waiting, in shadows lies the heart.
Utter purity and the lustrous promise of rebirth.

[Deborah Walker grew up in the most English town in the country, but she soon high-tailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner, Chris, and her two young children. Find Deborah in the British Museum trawling the past for future inspiration or on her blog:http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com/  Her poems have appeared in Dreams & Nightmares, Star*Line and Enchanted Conversation.]